Art 490: ePortfolios 4 Artists

Art 490 sections 1 & 3 – ePortfolios 4 Artists – Fall 2017

Course in designing, critiquing, and maintaining an Artist’s ePortfolio (website). Students will explore a range of platform, aesthetic, and content options. Students will learn online & documentation tools, develop & refine their websites, and interact with classmate websites.

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There are many information pages to help you on this website, and they are all first draft / rough draft. When you read one, it would be a big help if you’d leave a comment about the page at the bottom: LMK if the page was helpful, or didn’t answer your question, or was TMI and sort of confusing.

Schedule

Prerequisites

Objectives

The purpose of this course is to design & implement your own ePortfolio. To learn skills and methods that will allow the artist to maintain a current, and contemporary presence online.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Create their own ePortfolio

Easily & Quickly Update the content of their ePortfolio

Change the aesthetics of their ePortfolio presentation

Discuss the aesthetics of many different Artist’s ePortfolios

Prepare Images & Videos for their ePortfolio

Create an online CV (curriculum vitae) or Resume

Create an online Artist’s Statement

Exchange links with other aritsts

Format of the Course

Hybrid course: F2F + Online.

On Monday (section 3) or Wednesday (section 1) of each week students will meet F2F to critique each other’s work, discuss new activities, and to learn new techniques. Most of the artist’s website production will be done online outside of our 1 weekly F2F hour. The class Slack team will be a central discussion space between students and with the instructor. The class website will provide information on many ePortfolio parameters.

Textbook

The Internet

Required Materials

Phone / Laptop (can use Horn Center or Spidel Center)

Optional Materials

Repeating Costs

URL: $20/year +/-

Web Platform $100/year +/-

Cloud Storage (eg Dropbox) $100/year

Adobe Creative Cloud (non-student rate) $600/year

Potential Annual Costs ~$850/year

Non-Repeating Costs

DSLR or Mirrorless Camera $1,000 +/-

Online Resources

In addition to whatever Hosting and Cloud Storage platforms you choose, this class will use these online resources:

The Internet itself: we will view each other’s websites, many other artists websites, and various other resources online.

Technical Competence Required

You should have the ability to use a phone and a laptop. The ability to view websites, to navigate to different locations online, to download and install software on your devices.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Any smart phone and laptop made in the last few years should be sufficient. You can also use the computers in the Spidell Center or the Horn Center.

Minimum Software Requirements

A modern web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etcetera

Support software, like Photoshop, and perhaps a text editor like Brackets, Notepad++, or Sublime Text.

Safety

I hope you become obsessed with building a great ePrtfolio. But don’t forget the other people in your life, the need for fresh air and exercise, etcetera. If you’ve been staring at a screen for 20 minutes, it’s a good idea to look at something further away for a minute.

Attendance Policy

You learn when you show up and participate. You don’t when you don’t.

Grading Policy

The first week each student will write a blog post detailing their goals in the course, and a detailed breakdown of how they would like to be graded in the course. The last week each student will write a blog post evaluating their work against the criteria that they had previously defined, and arguing for the grade they believe they deserve.

Cheating & Plagiarism

Would probably be the single dumbest thing you ever did.

Final

Our final is

Section 1: Wed 13 Dec, 12:30 – 2:30

Section 3: Fri 15 Dec, 12:30 – 2:30

The final can be:

A day off

A crit day

A work day

A game day

A party

Something else

What we do for the final will be determined by student vote somewhere around week 13. I personally vote for option 5, but I’m just one vote.

General Policies & Regulations

Your Preferred Name

The University now allows you to set your “preferred” name. So if the name on your birth certificate is “Andrew,” but you go by “Drew”, now the university can refer to you as Drew. This makes it easier for me to find you on the roster, and better for your classmates who can refer to you by the name you choose.

Please set your University “Preferred Name” to be the same name that you’d like to use on our Roster, Email, Your Website, etc.

The right to be forgotten

Many weeks I will feature your website or your work in my weekly blog post. I will never show your work and say this is what not to do. I will only show your work and say Look at what a beautiful job Maddy did last week. I hope you feel good about this. But even if you do, it’s possible that you don’t want your photo or name on this website. If I ever post a photo of you, or your work, or list your name, or a link to your website, and you’d rather not have that here, just LMK. You can ask me to take something down today, tomorrow, next week, next year, or next decade. You never have to give me a reason. You only have to give me the URL where the item you’d like taken down is. It’s always up to you.

Be Kind

Remember that you are posting to the live web. You’ve surfed the web, right? So you know that every day you’ll find the most sublime acts of kindness and generosity right next to crazy, unwarranted rage. The good news about your website is that it’s yours. You always have the ability to modify or delete content as you see fit. But remember also that when you write about other artists you are publicly posting about a real person. You can be honest. But you can also be kind. If the golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, then perhaps the golden rule of blogging should be blog about others as you would have them blog about you.

Other Details

Incompletes

The School of Art grants “incompletes” rarely and only for the most extreme conditions.